by Kate Elliott
“You didn’t waste any time,” she replied, emboldened by seven days among forthright women. “This is the first time I’ve been alone.”
“Indeed.”
“Was there something you wanted to know?” Seeing his expression, she could not restrain a smile. “No, I don’t mean that as facetiously as it sounds. They are beautiful animals, aren’t they?”
“Yes, they are,” he said fervently, distracted by this comment. He leaned against the wagon an arm’s length away from her and gazed with rapt intensity at the horses. “See the stallion—the gray—there. He alone is priceless. The black stallion is picketed out—” He gestured with a turn of his head. “And mares—thirty-six here, another hundred at journey’s end. It is not so long to travel, to receive such a prize.”
“How long a journey is it?”
He smiled, not at her. When he turned to look at her, the smile faded. “Your employers have not kept you very well informed, I see. It seems of a piece with so negligently leaving you behind at the port. And being surprised that you had followed them so far.”
“Ah, well,” said Tess in khush, using a phrase she had learned from Yuri, “the wind has a careless heart.”
“You learn quickly.”
“I like languages. What will you use these horses for?” It was a casual question, thrown out to distract him, so she was not prepared for the sudden change in his expression.
“To make war.” He did not smile. “Now. You are no interpreter. Why are you here?”
She considered refusing to answer, but he was a dangerous man. It was better to choose her words carefully. “I am here to travel with the priest and his party.”
“I do not think that they want you to travel with them.”
“But I will travel with them nevertheless. Do you intend to make me leave the tribe?”
“I have never had any such intention. I don’t have time, now, to get you back to the port from which you can sail to Jeds. You will be safe with the tribe until we return.”
The implication of this reply took a moment to sink in. The breeze shifted, bringing the rich, musty scent of horses directly to her. “Until who returns?”
“Ah. You thought the khepelli party was to be escorted by the entire tribe. But it is many months’ journey to the shrine of Morava, where these holy men hope to find enlightenment. My jahar, my riders, will be their sole escort. We can move faster, and if there is trouble—Well, then, we are better able to deal with it. You, of course, will stay with the women.”
As if that settled the entire thing, he nodded and excused himself. He faded into the darkness, but she heard him exchange words with Mikhal a moment later, and then there was silence. She pushed away from the corral and walked slowly over to stare from a safe distance at the Chapalii tents. Two were dark, but one had a light on inside, a steady glow that she recognized as artificial. What other technology had they brought with them? She had not even brought an emergency transmitter, knowing she could rely on Dr. Hierakis once she reached Jeds.
She stood awhile, as the night air cooled around her, chilling her neck, and watched, until the light flicked out with unnatural suddenness. An animal chittered in the grass. Above, a brilliant spray of stars littered the night sky. She felt scared, suddenly, standing alone in unknown surroundings, caught out on a trackless plain, a solitary and untried force against whatever convoluted plans the Chapalii had made, were making even now, against her brother. The breeze tickled her cheeks. She sighed and walked back to camp, to the bright sanctuary of Sonia and her family.
Chapter Five
“Harmony consists of opposing tension.”
—HERACLEITUS OF EPHESUS
TESS FOLLOWED YURI OUT of the corral the next morning and walked with him behind the herd of horses as they were driven down to water at a pool. There was a skirmish, biting, a kick, and then the horses at the fore settled down to drink. Watchful young men patrolled the fringe of the herd, mounted on sturdy tarpans.
“It looks like they’re fighting over precedence,” Tess said, “but I suppose that’s just me wanting to make them like people. Or Chapalii,” she added to herself in Anglais.
Yuri glanced at her. “You don’t know much about horses, do you?”
“They have four legs, two ears, and a tail. That about covers it. Surely these aren’t all the horses your tribe owns?”
“Of course not. We keep the herd out on the grass. But we’ll keep the khuhaylans in close so that they can get to know us and trust us.” He called a greeting to an adolescent boy who rode by, and then turned and started back to camp.
“Yuri,” said Tess as she walked beside him, “can you teach me to ride?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m coming with you, when you leave.”
Now he lifted his head to stare at her. “But Tess, women don’t ride. I mean, not that women can’t ride horses, of course. They often ride out to hunt, but they never ride with the jahar.”
“I have to get to Jeds. I have to travel with the pilgrims.”
He examined her. Unlike the other young men, he was not shy with her, because of his status as her adopted brother. His expression was always a mirror of his thoughts, and right now he was troubled and thinking hard. “Are you a spy, as the priest Ishii says you are?” he asked finally.
“No, I’m not.”
“I believe you, Tess, but you must tell Ilya something convincing in order to get him to change his mind about letting you go with the jahar. It’s a very serious matter, riding. Ilya has enemies.”
“If Cha Ishii requests that I accompany you, then surely Ilya must agree.”
“I don’t think the priest Ishii wants you to go.”
“He doesn’t, but he will do as I say.”
“I think Ilya will be very curious to know why the priest will do as you say, Tess. You are alone, you have no saber, no horse, no tent, no family. Why should the priest obey you when he does not want to?”
Over the last seven days, Tess had developed a story, of sorts, to satisfy the women’s interest in her past. Now seemed the appropriate time to spin it further. “You know my brother is a merchant, Yuri. But I haven’t said—he has trade agreements, treaties, with the khepellis, and has recently suspected that they are not adhering to these treaties. So he sent me to their empire, their lands, to discover—well, I followed this party, I came over the seas with them, on the same ship. According to these treaties, they ought not to be here, and—and I need to know what they are looking for.”
Yuri rubbed his lower lip with one finger. “I never liked Jeds,” he said at last. “I never understood it. This is not Jeds, and this is not the land where the khepellis come from. So how can you have a treaty that says which of you may travel here?”
The question took Tess aback for a moment, but her training in Chapalii culture—more mercantile even than Earth’s—saved her. “Trade rights. Who gets to trade where.”
The answer evidently satisfied Yuri. “Well, I suppose Mama can spare you from the work for some time each day. If she agrees, then I will teach you.”
“And Bakhtiian?”
“If my mother gives you permission, then there is no reason for him to object. Why should he anyway? You’ll need to know how to ride whether you travel with the tribe or the jahar.”
“How many days will I have?”
“To learn? Until Eva Kolenin’s baby comes, I think. Ten days, perhaps, or twelve. But I warn you, Tess, no matter how well you can ride, you will have a hard time convincing Ilya.”
“Bakhtiian won’t have a choice. I’m going, Yuri.”
Yuri simply shook his head and refrained from comment.
Mother Orzhekov proved amenable, as long as Tess did her share of the work. It had not taken Tess many days to discover that there was leisure as well as work in this culture, and that a handful of women washing clothes were as likely to pause for an hour to gossip or play with the children as to work straight through and hurry on to ano
ther task. No one hurried except Bakhtiian, who was commonly said to have breathed too much southern air than was good for him when he had left, seventeen years ago, an impetuous, serious child of sixteen, and returned from Jeds five years later, just as serious and not one whit less impetuous. That journey had made him hasty and reckless, although Mother Orzhekov could be heard to mutter that Ilyakoria had always been hasty and reckless. But even she treated him with a respect that no thirty-three-year-old man, that not even Nikolai Sibirin, twenty years his senior and a healer as well, came close to receiving. He was a visionary—he was their visionary. Bakhtiian had great plans, and the tribe would follow him, even to the ends of the earth. The name he had earned on that trip—bakh-tiian, he-who-has-traveled-far—was as much a mystical as a physical appellation, and it now superseded his own deceased mother’s name of Orzhekov, which by birth he ought to be called.
And when Eva Kolenin went into labor and all the men were chased out of camp until the babe was safely born, for fear their presence might attract malignant spirits, Bakhtiian went only as far as his own small tent, set somewhat in back of the cluster that marked his aunt’s family.
Sent to get water from the stream, Tess and Sonia and Elena, the handsome gray-eyed girl who was still somehow unmarried, walked through the camp. Tent awnings flapped over empty ground cloths; men’s work, a shirt half-embroidered, a knife getting a new hilt, a saddle half made, lay abandoned, left in neat piles. The low trembling of drums accompanied their walk. A lulling chant rose and fell in time with the rhythm. A group of children ran by, giggling. They hushed suddenly, overborne by a swell in the chanting, and escaped in a rush out into the high grass. Alone at this end of camp, Bakhtiian sat in front of his tent, stitching at a pair of boots. He glanced up as the three women passed. Elena smiled at him, but his impassive eyes swept across them without pausing before he went back to his work. Elena frowned. Tess looked back and saw that he had, for a moment, looked after them.
“Why may he stay in camp?” she asked, slowly, in khush.
“You’ve the ending wrong,” said Sonia, correcting her. Her baby, Kolia, was asleep in a sling on her back. “This way.” She repeated it twice, and then went on. “Bakhtiian has his own tent, so there is no one to make him leave.”
Elena glanced back, and when she spoke, she measured her words carefully so that Tess could understand most of them. “They say that in some tribes, by the settled lands, the men own the tents. Do you suppose that is true? I would not want to live in such a tribe.”
“But not every woman has a tent,” said Tess.
“No.” said Sonia. “A woman who is marked for marriage is gifted a tent by her mother or her aunt.”
“Marked for marriage?”
Sonia lifted one hand to brush at the diagonal scar that ran from her cheekbone to her jawline. “When a man chooses to marry you, he marks you.”
“He marks you—with what?”
Sonia and Elena looked at each other. Elena had no scar. “With his saber,” said Sonia, as if it ought to be obvious.
Tess was appalled. She could not imagine Sonia allowing a man to mutilate her like that. But she was not about to say so. “And—ah—is that the only way to be married? To be—marked?”
“Yes,” said Elena.
“No.” Sonia shrugged. Grass dragged against the hems of their bright tunics. “There is another. ‘The long road to the setting sun, the binding of the four arches.’ But that is a path held by the gods. Few people wish—or dare—to ride it.”
Elena sniffed. “Better marked than bound.”
“I see,” said Tess, not understanding at all. She hesitated. “Does it hurt?”
Sonia smiled. “Yes. At first. But it is not a very deep cut. Bearing a child hurts far more. The small pain prepares you for the larger one.”
They reached the stream and began to fill the large leather pouches with cold water. “I’m not sure I would choose to marry, if I had to get such a scar,” said Tess carefully.
Elena turned sullen abruptly, hands caught in the rushing water. “What choice does a woman have in marriage?”
“Elena,” said Sonia. “Everyone knows Vladimir prefers you to all the other girls. Mikhal said that Vladi refused Lila’s and Marya’s advances, all because he’s trying to work up enough courage to mark you.”
“A kinless orphan! What woman would want that kind of husband?” Elena leaned forward, her hands in fists, her pale eyes fixed on Sonia. “I won’t let him get close enough to mark me. He’s fine as a lover, but I won’t have him as a husband.” Tears filled her eyes, and she jumped up and ran off.
Sonia deftly extracted from the rushing stream the two half-full pouches that Elena had dropped. “She’s always wished that Ilya would mark her, but it’s a vain hope, I fear.”
“Do you really have no choice in marriage?”
“In the choosing? No. You must see, Tess, that men have no power over us at all when we’re unmarried, but a man who is married can command his wife in certain things, or has at least some power over her that he has over no other woman.”
“Then why do you marry?”
The sun shone full on Sonia’s face and fair hair, casting a glow on her cheeks. “Sometimes a man has that look in his eye that is hard to resist. You have forgotten, Tess, because I think your heart still aches.”
Tess was silent. The wind blew tiny ripples across a shallow backwater.
“It is no shame,” said Sonia softly. “We have all hurt for a man who did not love us.”
“I tried so hard.”
“Perhaps that is why you failed.”
Tess put her hands full into the stream. The cold water dragged at her fingers. “Jacques wanted something he thought I had, that I could give him—power and wealth. Something he was too lazy to earn for himself. When he found out I couldn’t give it to him, he left. He never loved me at all. I was such a fool.” She pulled her hands out of the water. They were already so chilled it was difficult to bend them, but she forced them slowly into fists.
“When you have a full and eager heart in you, you must not go to the man whose heart is empty and weak.”
“I don’t know if I can judge anymore.” Tess sat silent for a long moment, watching the light move from ripple to ripple on the stream. “I’m afraid to try.”
“Fear is a poor teacher. But now you have friends. We will help you. It would be best, I think, if you did not approach any of the married men to begin with. One must be discreet, especially in the camp. It is terribly impolite, especially in front of the wife, to flaunt such a thing. But no matter. We have many fine unmarried men to choose from. Vladimir—no, too vain. Kirill—too forward. Yuri—”
Tess laughed. It seemed very natural to speak of affairs so intensely personal, here, with Sonia, in the warming spring sun, the drums a quiet drone in the distance. “Yuri is my brother.”
“Yes. A brother is of far greater value than a husband or a lover. They are much easier to order around. Come, we ought to go back.” She rose and, grasping Tess’s hand, helped her to her feet. They distributed the extra pouches around their shoulders and walked back to camp. Kolia slept on. A striped tent flap, untied, fluttered in the breeze, one bright end snapping up and down. Pots dangled from side ropes, striking a high tinny accompaniment to the resonant pulse of the women’s voices beyond. When they passed Bakhtiian this time, he did not even look up. He had one hand tucked inside the boot, the needle pulling in and out in an even stitch. Sonia’s daughter Katerina crouched beside him, intently watching him work.
“Why did he go to Jeds?” Tess asked. “Why would he even have thought of it? Had you ever heard of Jeds before? Had any other jaran ever gone?”
“No, Ilya was the first. I suppose he heard of it when he was a boy. Jaran often trade at ports along the coast. Even so far east as we are now, Jeds is known at every port. I don’t know why he went. He was only sixteen. Mama once said there was something to do with his sister, that when she married, he
was very angry, but Ilya has always looked farther than others do. I remember when he came back. He told us that if the jaran were one people, and not many tribes, then we would never have to fear the khaja, the settled people, who build their stone tents farther out each year on the plains that the gods meant for our home.”
“Are there many tribes?”
“There are a thousand tribes, and a thousand thousand families. We are as plentiful as the birds, and as swift as our horses, and as strong—as strong as a woman avenging her child. So Ilya began to weave a great tapestry, and the Elders of many tribes offered to be the warp in his loom, and the dyans of many jahars offered themselves and their riders as the weft. So the pattern grew. He made enemies. And—oh, it was seven years ago, now—those enemies rode into camp one night when he was away and killed his sister and his mother and father and his sister’s five-year-old son.”
They had reached the far end of camp and just as they handed the water over to Sonia’s mother, the chanting stopped abruptly, pierced by the high wail of a baby. Immediately, singing broke out. A girl ran off to find the father. Kolia snuffled and yawned and opened his eyes.
Sonia set him on the rug under the eye of his grandmother and tugged Tess away. “We’ll go start supper. The men will be hungry.”
“But then what happened?” Tess glanced back at the tent where the birth had taken place. The infant cried in bursts. Suddenly there was silence, and the midwife stuck her head outside the tent and called: “He’s already suckling.” Women crowded in to greet the mother.
“What happened? Oh, with Ilya? He went on. What else could he do? But he has never loved anyone since, except—” Her lips tugged in an involuntary grimace. “Well, he cannot care too deeply now, for fear he may lose more. But he listens to no one. He’s made all the jaran his, almost, and when he gets the rest of these khuhaylan horses from across the sea, he’ll breed them and then lead the jaran against the khaja, and the name of our people will be on the lips of every person in every land there is, because those lands will be ours. Oh, good. Stassia found dhal roots. Katerina, you little imp, what have you done to your shift?” She gathered her daughter into her arms and gave her a kiss, apparently oblivious to the incongruity of Bakhtiian’s great plan for conquest set hard against her sister’s plans for supper.